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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

One

Book 1 of 52. Go me!

This week I read Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I bought it about 6 months ago off a 50% off table at B&N, but then it just sort of sat on my bookshelf. This is a bad habit of mine. In fact, when I first decided to do this 52 book thing, I spent 20 minutes wandering around the house pulling books off of the shelves that I've always meant to read, but just never got around to. I stacked up about 12, mostly non-fiction. I want to get a good mix of fiction, non-fiction, some young adult literature, and maybe a couple biographies. Oh man. This is going to be so fun!

Okay, okay, COLD MOUNTAIN!

It was so good. So, so good. A great way to kick off the book program. I think that I (and probably ya'll too) will get bored if I try to summarize all these books, so instead, I'll just tell you what I liked, what I didn't and maybe my fav. quote. (or two. or three. or...)

LIKE: I don't know if C.F. is a Christian, but he totally should be. This book is an absolutely beautiful representation of what it is to live in a broken and futile world. What it is to strive and fail, to love and lose, to live and die. It's absolutely heart wrenching and heartbreaking, but in the most lovely, poignant way. I kept dog-earing pages that had quotes that I wanted to read to David, and I'm not kidding you, there are like 25 pages turned down. I think I'm just going to have to make him read it. I also loved the main female character, Ada. She's a winner.

NO LIKE: The end. NOT because it was a bad ending. It wasn't. I just didn't like it because... just because... because it was... it was... dang it, it was a perfect ending. I just hated it anyway. Read it, you'll see. Then we can commiserate. :)

FAV QUOTES:
"Simply living had never struck Ada as such a tiresome business. After breakfast was done, they worked constantly. On days when there was not one big thing to do, they did many small ones, choring around as needed... Now, with Ruby, all the actual facts and processes connected with food and clothing and shelter were unpleasantly concrete, falling immediately and directly to hand, and every one of them calling for exertion... The rudeness of eating, of living, that's where Ruby seemed to aim Ada every day that first month."

"To Ada though, it seemed akin to a miracle that Stobrod, of all people, should offer himself up as proof positive that no matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial."

"Inman had put what nuts he could find in his haversack, but had never got around to eating them, for the more he thought the more he reckoned that the work it would take to break them open would overbalance the sustenance he would get from them, each one holding no more meat than would be around the end joint of your forefinger. Yet, he didn't throw them out, for he worried that if you put all of life to such a test, it would not seem worth living."

"They were both at such an age that they stood on a cusp. The could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment."

I know, right?!?!? You can totally borrow my copy.

AND, here is my picture for the week. Freakishly appropriate, I know. :)

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